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You are 100% right, but I would not be as dismissive to the engineering team. When you run a hardware startup, you can only hope for an experienced team that w

You are 100% right, but I would not be as dismissive to the engineering team. When you run a hardware startup, you can only hope for an experienced team that would do everything by the book and implement best practices from the very first production unit. Reality is: that’s a luxury for most hardware startup teams out there. Typically, there’s a frantic rush to get your device to market that you simply skip, or more likely don’t even have time to think about stuff like climate chamber cycling. One thing I’m almost sure of: these guys have learned something — the engineer’s way. Good chance there’s a guy there googling climate chambers to ask the CEO for a budget to buy one.

toss1 4y ago
>>Typically, there’s a frantic rush to get your device to market that you simply skip, or more likely don’t even have time to think about stuff like climate chamber cycling. And that, right there, is the difference between a company oriented around myopic management vs a company oriented around robust quality. Any company trying to build a quality reputation would spec this stuff out AT THE BEGINNING — what are the operational requirements, what loads will they see, in what environments will they run, etc??? Then spec every component, and test the whole lot against those requirements. Sure, this is more like the dreaded "waterfall" vs "agile", but the result is a quality product from the start that has far fewer of these problems (because they did this whole test & fix routine at the prototype or Alpha test stages), rather than showing up with stories like this of how they recovered from customer-reported problems. If you're telling your customers that they're the Alpha testers because they get early access, fine. If you're selling it as a finished product, then we know your company isn't prioritizing actual quality.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > If you're telling your customers that they're the Alpha testers because they get early access, fine. If you're selling it as a finished product, then we know your company isn't prioritizing actual quality. Sounds like Tesla... although it is public knowledge there that you are still alpha testers years after a model was introduced.
bostik 4y ago
Sorry, but this is a bit rich: > When you run a hardware startup, you can only hope for an experienced team If you run a hardware startup and fail to acknowledge that places like Alaska or Ontario exist, you fail before even getting close to merely inexperienced. The most charitable word I can think of is "myopic".
- mcculley 4y ago
  It is not only startups and not only cold places that are overlooked. The iPhone documentation says that it should not be used outside of 32°-95°F. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201678 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201678
  - runnerup 4y ago
    That seems reasonably accurate on the high end for me. For _sustained_ use, iPhones generally stop working well around 100-105F. I suspect I would be disappointed by the performance of an iPhone that could operate in >125F temperatures (temperatures which I have worked in outdoors for several years)
    - mcculley 4y ago
      I did not say the documentation is wrong. I am saying that it is not only startups that have trouble imagining their product being used somewhere other than Silicon Valley.
      - runnerup 4y ago
        Ah yeah, the first part of my response was just fluff. I’m undecided if they lacked imagination. I work with a lot of electronics that go in oil wells and we have to make different models for different temperature ranges. We usually have to sacrifice a lot of functionality to gain high operating temperatures. I think it’s possible Apple decided not to serve the markets which need high operating temperatures, rather than simply didn’t even think about the possibility. It affected me, when I worked outdoors in Saudi Arabia and UAE and even Houston. But I probably would still buy a high performance, high battery life 13 Pro Maxover a hypothetical lower performance 13 ExtremeEnvironment edition. Operating at 125F ambient would require a whole lot of sacrifice on the power envelope and much greater overall size of the product. I like big phones but my current Pro Max is about as large as I’d like a phone to be.
spaceywilly 4y ago
I’ve worked for a hardware startup. We didn’t have the budget for a thermal chamber, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t test and anticipate temperature related issues. We had plenty of setups like the one in the blog with units in the fridge or on a car dashboard on a summer day. The difference is we did it before the units reached customers.
- exmadscientist 4y ago
  We skip stuff like the temperature chamber all the time. The difference is that we know what we're skipping and why. This can easily make for a "10x" team: we are experienced enough to know what we can get away with, and experienced enough to know very quickly what happened when we fail to get away with it. (So it's often a pretty quick and direct fix! Well, that or a C-level "you declined this part of our proposal so now it's failing exactly like we told you it would so you're looking at this big of a redo, exactly like we told you...").
  - dboreham 4y ago
    But you probably have a cupboard full of freezer spray cans and a heat gun.
    - exmadscientist 4y ago
      Nope, they're in a pile-mess on a shelf, not a cupboard! Got you there! :)

toss1 4y ago

>>Typically, there’s a frantic rush to get your device to market that you simply skip, or more likely don’t even have time to think about stuff like climate chamber cycling. And that, right there, is the difference between a company oriented around myopic management vs a company oriented around robust quality. Any company trying to build a quality reputation would spec this stuff out AT THE BEGINNING — what are the operational requirements, what loads will they see, in what environments will they run, etc??? Then spec every component, and test the whole lot against those requirements. Sure, this is more like the dreaded "waterfall" vs "agile", but the result is a quality product from the start that has far fewer of these problems (because they did this whole test & fix routine at the prototype or Alpha test stages), rather than showing up with stories like this of how they recovered from customer-reported problems. If you're telling your customers that they're the Alpha testers because they get early access, fine. If you're selling it as a finished product, then we know your company isn't prioritizing actual quality.

mschuster91 4y ago
> If you're telling your customers that they're the Alpha testers because they get early access, fine. If you're selling it as a finished product, then we know your company isn't prioritizing actual quality. Sounds like Tesla... although it is public knowledge there that you are still alpha testers years after a model was introduced.

bostik 4y ago

Sorry, but this is a bit rich: > When you run a hardware startup, you can only hope for an experienced team If you run a hardware startup and fail to acknowledge that places like Alaska or Ontario exist, you fail before even getting close to merely inexperienced. The most charitable word I can think of is "myopic".

mcculley 4y ago
It is not only startups and not only cold places that are overlooked. The iPhone documentation says that it should not be used outside of 32°-95°F. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201678 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201678
- runnerup 4y ago
  That seems reasonably accurate on the high end for me. For _sustained_ use, iPhones generally stop working well around 100-105F. I suspect I would be disappointed by the performance of an iPhone that could operate in >125F temperatures (temperatures which I have worked in outdoors for several years)
  - mcculley 4y ago
    I did not say the documentation is wrong. I am saying that it is not only startups that have trouble imagining their product being used somewhere other than Silicon Valley.
    - runnerup 4y ago
      Ah yeah, the first part of my response was just fluff. I’m undecided if they lacked imagination. I work with a lot of electronics that go in oil wells and we have to make different models for different temperature ranges. We usually have to sacrifice a lot of functionality to gain high operating temperatures. I think it’s possible Apple decided not to serve the markets which need high operating temperatures, rather than simply didn’t even think about the possibility. It affected me, when I worked outdoors in Saudi Arabia and UAE and even Houston. But I probably would still buy a high performance, high battery life 13 Pro Maxover a hypothetical lower performance 13 ExtremeEnvironment edition. Operating at 125F ambient would require a whole lot of sacrifice on the power envelope and much greater overall size of the product. I like big phones but my current Pro Max is about as large as I’d like a phone to be.

spaceywilly 4y ago

I’ve worked for a hardware startup. We didn’t have the budget for a thermal chamber, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t test and anticipate temperature related issues. We had plenty of setups like the one in the blog with units in the fridge or on a car dashboard on a summer day. The difference is we did it before the units reached customers.

exmadscientist 4y ago
We skip stuff like the temperature chamber all the time. The difference is that we know what we're skipping and why. This can easily make for a "10x" team: we are experienced enough to know what we can get away with, and experienced enough to know very quickly what happened when we fail to get away with it. (So it's often a pretty quick and direct fix! Well, that or a C-level "you declined this part of our proposal so now it's failing exactly like we told you it would so you're looking at this big of a redo, exactly like we told you...").
- dboreham 4y ago
  But you probably have a cupboard full of freezer spray cans and a heat gun.
  - exmadscientist 4y ago
    Nope, they're in a pile-mess on a shelf, not a cupboard! Got you there! :)